


Journey - To You, I Cannot Say Goodbye

by LoveandKon



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Adventure & Romance, Angst, Eventual Romance, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:41:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28044843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoveandKon/pseuds/LoveandKon
Summary: A brief story following Link's journey with Zelda after the events of Breath of the Wild. Burdened with regret, and bridled with a burgeoning passion for his companion he can't quite understand, Link deals with the guilt of failing to utter the truth to his first love. Trouble brews on the horizon, as they search for answers to repair the mess Ganon made of their world
Relationships: Link/Zelda (Legend of Zelda)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 16





	1. Beginning

They left behind smoothed down grass and the wind picked up the warmth their bodies left behind, but a passerby on his way to town could smell it in the air. Wind like this, pouring in from the sea, only found its way inland when love had crossed the road, set up a tent, and laid under the stars. 

Now he was catching breaths of it, trying to breath in life’s journey as much as he could. One deep breath made his achy back feel limber, and a second turned the cracked stones of his knees into the springy elastic of his younger days. The final few miles back home would be easier now. Much easier. 

He mouthed thank you in the direction the wind blew, tightened his belt, and marched on home. There was a home cooked meal and some love making just ahead, if he could make it back. 

*************************************************************************************************************

She found the way he climbed the rocks ahead of them alarming; it wasn’t the speed with which he reached the top, or even the way he climbed. It was the way he knew the faces of each mountain they found. The rocks themselves were familiar friends that lent a hand on his climb. He made their journey seem like an easy thing. 

She found no such assistance on her way up the mountains, and even after more than a year of traveling together, the tips of her fingers were a mix of irritated skin and droplets of blood peeking out from cracks around the nail. Early on in their travels together, she’d held these irritations as important moments in her own growth. The scrapes on her knees and the dull ache in her back when they stopped for sleep were signs that they were moving forward. It was such a juvenile thing, looking back now, but progress seemed so slow then. 

At some point, that forward progress had simmered into a hot irritation over every facet of their journey that she had trouble understanding for some time. The land was in recovery, thanks to the not-so-small efforts made by the traveling pair no less, and she loved to drink in all the sights it offered them on a daily basis. Water grew clearer, and life seemed to move back to the point of stasis again. There were days in the beginning where the flowers at her feet and the water that found her knees as they waded through rivers felt like they were rushing back to the surface, late for an appointment. Eventually, she gathered, they’d arrived just as they needed to, and life around her settled into warm arms waiting to greet her. 

Her irritation, she realized, stemmed from the way that life froze her lungs with rigid mountain air, the way it burned the bottom of her feet straight through her boots on hot summer mornings, and the way it seemed to play favorites on their journeys up mountain walls. The world didn’t seem particularly interested in easing her into life after a 100 year fog. She wanted every moment she spent on this journey to be something burned into her mind, without any conscious choice. Days she spent meandering through the hills with Link were supposed to be a rich celebration, but life was bent on making her scratch and claw for its appreciation. 

That irritation eventually cooled, and she found herself appreciating things she’d never imagined she could. 

She reached the top of their climb, and found him resting on a bed of rocks just underneath the shade of a cluster of trees. His chest pounded along with the sound of his raspy breathing, residue left over from a hundred years of sleep and a constant beating from land and machine. Still, even with his breath sounding more like a cough than an ambient song, there was a natural symmetry she’d never seen in a human body before. As close as her own figure came to that symmetry, there was an unexpectedness about his form that stirred both appreciation and jealousy. 

He sat up when she drew near, and wordlessly tossed her a gourd of water. She took a drink, and collapsed against a pillow of red leaves that had piled together in the first few days of autumn. The sun hung in the sky, but it gave them a generous respite under the shade of the trees. 

She added her own shirt to the pile that Link had started, and let the wounds on her stomach and shoulders feel the touch of the breeze that blew in from the not so distant ocean. 

“How much longer now?” she asked. 

“Just a few days, I think,” the boy laid out on the rock replied. 

“How much longer after that?” she replied back. 

He flipped over on the rock, and she could see him gazing back the way they’d come. His arm was leaned over and his fingers slowly drew lines in the dirt next to her own. 

“I can’t imagine any longer than you’ve waited before,” he answered after a while. 

There was a resigned comfort that had developed between the two of them on their journey from the center of Hyrule to the string of ancient towns they searched for now. As natural as he seemed in their journey forward, she realized neither of them knew how long their journey would take them, or if they’d even reach their destination. 

‘Just a few days, I think,’ had become another way of breathing for the both of them. 

When they’d first started their journey, she felt an all consuming tiredness envelope her nearly all the time. Every night seemed to bring its heaviness to the tips of her fingers, and it brought a weeping sadness over her. For all of their incredible losses, there could be only a flood of tears and little to no answers. When morning came, the heavy load she carried felt a little bit lighter. 

Laying here now, she knew that tiredness would stay buried in her chest for as long she lived in Hyrule. There couldn’t be enough cracks in her body for it to completely burn away. That said, it was unmistakable how much better she felt now. 

Her companion, however, seemed more tired the further they traveled on. His body never seemed to slow, and the physicality of their journey called for all of the energy he had left to give. 

No, the weariness she felt was in the way his body seemed to speak for him. His body had become a tool for their harrowing efforts, but his soul had aged in all their years apart. 

She pulled him down from the rock, and as the leaves came to rest from the thud of his body on the ground, she felt the warmth of his sleeping breath against her shoulder. 

“It won’t be much longer. Not much longer at all,” she said, soaking in the day that bloomed around them. 

*************************************************************************************************************

The stars that hung over Hyrule that night were street lamps and paper lanterns on the water for the ghost he knew would visit him again. 

There was a twinge of guilt as he brushed Zelda’s hair aside and checked her sleeping face. He confirmed her quiet peace, and gently laid her against on the bank of the hill they’d settled on for the night. 

Autumn nights in Hyrule weren’t so bad - they were mostly a lukewarm mix of a chilly sea breeze and the residue of summer’s heat. They’d managed to travel a bit further after their siesta earlier in the day, and he could see smoke from a billowing town chimney a day or two in the distance. 

Though the air was kind that day, the journey had left Link’s knees creaky, and Zelda had nearly led him by the hand to their stopping place. 

He turned to watch her sleep, and remembered just how tired she’d been when they first started. Her first sweat in the fields of Hyrule came slow, and she found herself out of breath at nearly every stop they made. There was an absolute happiness that had pushed her forward, though, and now she was a great deal faster than he was. 

The naturalness of the world around them had returned after its time away, and it had leaked into her body. There was always a pool of sweat on her back now, and the muscles in her arms and legs were strong from hours of climbing, running, and wading. He felt his own atrophied form, and remembered what it was like on his first journey to this part of the world. 

There was an ease among them, and a closeness that only comes when the pretense of words seem to die away. He’d felt that a few times before in his life, but he knew it to be absolutely true now. There was a tether that ran from her hands to his, and even now, watching her while washed in a continuing rain of guilt, he could see it truer than the light of any arrow. 

It made the moments he knew were coming to be all the harder. 

He felt them surround him, like a shadow hitting the ground. There was an inevitability that made him smile, and a pain that started to swell in his chest. 

Link took a seat on the embankment, and the light of the moon brought a cool blue over the greens and reds of the autumn grasses. He closed his eyes, and remembered the summer heat of a place in a castle so very far from he laid now. 

At first, he could only see rubble, but it slowly shifted into tapestries and crumpled blankets on a balcony. The feeling of the grass against his body became a cool stone, and the breeze that settled in from the sea shifted from salt in his nose to a still Hyrule night. 

“You’re back, finally,” the boy next to him said. 

“Was I gone long?” Link asked. 

The boy turned to him and smiled. 

“I think it’s been a 100 years or so, give or take a few nights,” he said. 

The rasp of Link’s breathing had subsided, and he could feel the wholeness of the summer’s air in his lungs again. He looked over the boy who laid next to him up and down, and remembered this night from so long ago. 

So long before he met her. 

“Where were we last time?” Link asked. 

“I think you imagined us in the fields where you grew up,” the boy replied. He waited for a while, “But you would remember better than me.” 

The boy tried to catch the stars in the sky with his fingers, and for a while Link watched. It was an oddity, being back in this moment. He remembered trying to catch the stars too, and even grabbing fireflies, but now his arms were too heavy. 

He managed to reach out his hand far enough to lock fingers with the boy. They stayed a while under crumpled blankets. 

The boy played with the golden ends Link’s hair for a while. Wading through some embarrassment, they eventually locked eyes and passed the time as quietly as they could. 

“You feel so much older every time you come here, you know,” the boy started, “it’d be nice if I could feel that way too.”

“Sorry, this is the only version of you I have left I’m afraid,” Link replied. 

“I think my real self wouldn’t mind a little imagination,” the boy replied. 

“He was upset the last time I saw him,” Link said. 

The boy couldn’t help but smile. 

Link had this conversation on a nightly basis since his journey had started over a hundred years ago. It was a burden that would travel with him wherever he went, much like any other. It felt no heavier than that of the friends he’d left behind, or the words they’d given him when he saw them again. It was no deeper than the words he whispered into Zelda’s ears when she cried at the hut her father had made near Mount Hylia. 

It was no more painful than the beating both his body and soul had taken on his journey here, but it stayed with him and visited him more often than any other. He found he could forget it when his head was buried on Zelda’s shoulder, or when they laid together under the Hylian sun. He could forget it when the mist of the morning trickled through, and he could taste the importance of the journey that laid ahead. 

But at night, he had no choice. He conjured this memory of a boy he knew so long ago. To an outsider, it seemed like a great burden to carry. But the guilt came in knowing this was his choice. The guilt came when they wordlessly embraced, and when he didn’t want to let go. 

“I’m sorry, so so sorry,” Link mouthed. There were tears that bubbled to the surface. 

The boy’s arms tightened around him, and the mist of the morning that brought the taste of his journey brought Link from his crumpled blankets and first love to the feeling of grass and the smell of lilac in the golden hair of the girl who had curled up next to him. 

When the first light seeped through, he woke her up. They tumbled on the ground for a while, a mess of relief and anxiety that could only be satisfied in each other’s arms. It never went any further, but it was warm, and inviting. It was all the two of them had. 

They started on foot for the smoke Link said he could see in the distance. Zelda confirmed it, remarked on how far he could see, and trotted on a while ahead. 

He felt an odd rain brewing in the sky above. On the precipice of a sleep that could only be brought on through the naturalness of living a day, Link remembered a boy he had loved one last time, and found no cure for the sorrow that aged his bones and cooled his heart.


	2. Journey to Karata Village

Fall brought swashes of red and brown leaves that seemed to talk like old friends on the old stone walls leading into Karata village. When Zelda and her traveler found their way to the smokey chimney they’d seen in the distance, she couldn’t help but notice that the falling of the leaves, the moss that grew through the stone walls ahead of them, and billowing smoke that puffed out of the chimney were all working in a natural symbiosis. 

Mountains and hills bloomed around them, and the path they followed here was winding. Without Link’s eyes, she wasn’t sure they would have found the village at all. Now that they were on the path, she was absolutely sure they’d never lose it. The way it wound through the mountains felt familiar to her, nearly like the halls she’d run through as a child. 

The lanterns that lit the path were a cool blue, and they commanded the shade from the trees like little planets with consuming orbits. 

Once or twice the line of lanterns met an abrupt end, and all that was before them were lines of trees and stone crushed by an encroaching undergrowth. Still, she felt no mystery. This part of the world, a place they’d never been, was undoubtedly nostalgic. 

When she’d read about Karata village as a child in her father’s study, her mind struggled to imagine anything other than a magical city that fell from some other world. The magic she remembered came from the dust that spilled out when she flipped through the tome’s pages, mostly because it felt more like a book of fairy tales than a brief history of a small seaside town. The etherealness, well, she couldn’t wrap her head around a place that didn’t exist in any other book she read in her father’s library. 

As a child, she imagined a city full of dancers and street vendors, in a valley surrounded by waterfalls and paper lanterns. Her mother had helped her flip through pages and pages of every Hylian atlas they could find. 

It was a fond indulgence that made her heart ache just a little bit. 

What laid before her, as a young woman of roughly 118 years of age, was a sleepy retreat, tucked away in a place she could never dream. She noticed the leaves crunching at her feet, and the way her boots sloshed through lakes of mud hidden in between cracked pathway stones, not as irritations, but as sounds of life that seemed like they should echo for miles. 

“It’s just like Lon Lon, don’t you think,” Link muttered, stopped for a second to both gather his breathing, and taste what was hanging in the air.   
“So you feel it too?” she asked back. 

“It’s a scary place we’ve found, Zelda,” he replied. 

When Link handed her the party’s drinking gourd, she closed her eyes and imagined the taste of milk against her lips, served cold after a hard day’s ride at the ranch. Water from a spring they found slid down her throat, but it was milk that quenched her thirst. 

They’d passed by what remained of the ranch in their first few weeks of travel. She remembered the hollowed out frames that held together what was left of her memories. She knew before they went what she would find, but somehow, knowing made it harder to accept. It was an inevitability that she wanted so badly to be wrong. 

They had dug out a preserved green bottle that Zelda used to catch fireflies in the summer. She felt for the cold of the bottle’s cap in her bag, and it warmed her heart through the tips of her fingers. 

In the distance, they saw a wooden door surrounded by stone walls, illuminated like the blue of the sea under the shade of nearby trees. It was unmistakable just how much the breeze from the sea and the blue lanterns made her feel like she was on a ship being led home. 

She watched Link jump from leaf pile to leaf pile, and there was an ease that followed. She was certain that there was very old magic leading them here, and she hadn’t ascertained if that magic was a siren’s song or a home cooked meal quite yet. 

But Link had seen all matters of ancient magic. She was smarter than he in almost every conceivable way - and it showed quite often. But she had come to trust his intuition, and she would know when it was time to be truly afraid. For now, she watched her Hylian knight jump like a child from leaf to leaf, and couldn’t help but laugh. 

“How odd it will be when they see a member of the Royal Guard hopping on leaf piles,” she remarked. 

“I think they might be too interested in you to notice me, Princess,” Link replied. 

Joke as they might, it seemed entirely possible that whoever waited from them through the town’s gates might not know them at all. For a place so far away, with such old magic, things like the royal guard or sovereignty seemed of little importance. 

In this world they helped to save, Link and Zelda couldn’t disagree with that notion, either. 

Link creaked the wooden doors of the village open, and there was a natural quiet that lingered in the square. Before them was a beautiful garden that seemed older than the Earth itself, and the remains of a shrine littered with smouldering pots of incense. Moss had grown into any crevice it could find, and the entire plaza seemed dyed with a green hue from the Earth. The only places that remained untouched were a statue of a beautiful woman sitting beside the shrine, and a wooden cart across the way in front of a town well. 

The air smelled of sweet peaches, and little bugs like fireworks hung over ponds in natural stone basins. The water was clear, and its koi inhabitants seemed to come from crevices in the stone that led to some far off world. They were bright variants of orange and green, and she’d never seen them in a book or in a lab before. 

There was no urge to study or hold them - it felt natural to observe them for as long as life would let her. 

“You should pray for good luck,” Link said, motioning to the shrine. 

“Pray with me,” she said, tugging on his fingers. 

“I consider myself a better water fetching boy,” he replied with a smile, walking off towards the older woman and her cart. 

Zelda clapped her hands together, and held steadfast to a memory she held dear. One she’d thank Link for, someday. 

Truth be told, Zelda wasn’t sure what was waiting for them in Karata when Link had urged her forward some few months prior. In a haze brought on by a late night fog and a few swigs of a bottled spirit they’d bought at a local tavern, she recalled many villages and cities from far off places that were at best long forgotten ruins and and at worst visions from a traveling bard’s collection of tales. 

There were fairy tales and historical indexes in the Hyrulian library, and Karata was somewhere in between them both. 

“Where are we going, Link?” she recalled asking. In her mind, she imagined a party scene at the tavern below them. She rubbed her feet against the grass like she was dancing. 

In reality, the night had been quiet, the fruits of their labor slow to spread from town to town. Every place was more full of life than the direction they’d traveled from, but nothing was connected. All of their stops were summer groves, but Hyrule was dispersed and cracked apart. 

Link didn’t reply, but she could feel his eyes moving out over the field. It was hard to know if his mind had taken itself to some other place, far from them, or if he was simply watching the way the wind moved a tree out in the distance. Either was fine, but she yearned to know. 

“I don’t want you to be my shepherd,” she said after a while, “Wherever we go, it has to be unfamiliar water for the both of us. It’s the only way we’ll find anything meaningful.” 

Link drew a long breath, and laid flat against the grass. 

“Unfamiliar water is overrated, you know,” Link replied. He turned his body and seemed so close he hovered over her. His best efforts only managed a sweet smirk. The smell of spirit eked out, which wasn’t particularly pleasing, but she felt droplets of his sweat against her neck, and truthfully, that was the part of him she enjoyed most. 

He felt like summer every night. His body was meant for it. 

Still, as she drew her arms around his back, there was a gap she couldn’t cross. 

Traveling with Link was full of reminders that the two of them shared equally harrowing journeys that were painfully devoid of common ground. They had been together for some time, but there were still pieces of each other they couldn’t find. She wanted to fix the land she had failed before, and Link, well it was hard to know what he wanted. But it wasn’t time for thinking, or even knowing. 

In the dark, they fumbled in each other’s arms looking for ways to understand each other. 

“Where do we find uncharted water,” he said, turning back to his sprawled out position on the grass. 

She thought for a long while, sucking down the last dregs of a drink that calmed her embarrassment and would set them on a journey that led to the temple she prayed at now. 

“I remember reading about a village, far away from here in a deep part of Hyrule. I think you’d find it’s quite unlike any place you’ve been,” she said. 

“What makes you say that,” Link replied, his voice taking the quiet tone he adopted when he wanted to be alone for a while. 

“It’s not on any maps, I think you’ll find,” Zelda replied, holding up their sheikah slate. 

He didn’t reply, and she knew he was waiting.

“Maybe that means it’s not real. Maybe it’s long gone and buried.” she started. She felt for the bottle she kept in her bag, but it was already in Link’s hand, his fingers holding its green glow up in the sky. 

“But still worth seeing.” 

She clapped her hands twice before descending back down the steps from the shrine. The pots of incense continued to burn, though they seemed powerless against the drizzle that came and went in the plaza. A morning dew was resilient against the sun that occasionally peaked through the clouds, hidden by the shade of the trees. 

She swore she heard the sound of people in the distance while she was praying, but the old woman and her cart were all she could see. The road out of the plaza led down and further into the basin of the mountains, but trees obscured it from view. 

From her seat on a stonebench, she couldn’t help but feel like they’d stumbled on a graveyard. 

When their business was done, the older woman who sold Link water, and a little trinket that he tied around Zelda’s wrist, followed the path through the trees. The quietness of the village dimmed Zelda’s hearing, and she wasn’t sure if the woman had really been there at all. 

“It’s like she was waiting for us,” Link remarked. 

“What’s it for?” Zelda asked, looking at the red string and green paper sitting below the glove on her left wrist. 

“It’s meant to bring you back home,” he replied. 

“She said there will be beds for us tonight if we want. Her son owns the inn we’ll find in town,” he started, taking a seat next to her. 

“I thought it would be different, you know,” she replied, looking over the trees that slouched against the city walls, and the steps that seemed to lead into another world. 

“Uncharted waters are always a little different than we think they’ll be,” Link replied. 

She smelled the peaches in the air, and wondered how it could be possible that such a beautiful place could remain untouched by the calamity. This place reminded her of all the secret places behind the castle her mother showed her, and the ponds that surrounded her seemed deeper than those she saw on her trips with her father to Zora’s domain. 

It was like all the memories of the world converged in this one place. 

“We can turn back, if you want,” Link said. 

“No, I don’t think that would be a good idea. There’s too much to learn here, Link” she replied. 

Zelda stood, her head weary from an anxiety, and headed towards the stairs into town. Her legs were weak, but not from a climb or a long river she had to wade through. There was a heaviness that only came when one was on the precipice of moving forward. 

“Coming?” she asked, turning and holding out her hand. There was a puzzled naivety on the boy’s face. The more time she spent with Link, the more she came to appreciate the ways she could surprise him. 

*************************************************************************************************************

“You’ve never told me,” Link started, fumbling with the boy’s fingers. 

They sat secluded, underneath a tree that hid them from the rain. 

“Told you about what?” the boy replied. He watched the sky through the tries like the branches and leaves were beautiful window panes. 

“Where you’re from,” Link replied. 

The boy couldn’t help but smile. 

“Where I’m from, huh…” the boy started, “I think you’ll find it’s unlike any place you’ve been.” 

“A magical place, hidden in the mountains. I’d like to take you there someday, Link.” 

*************************************************************************************************************


	3. An Island Summer

There was a forest town near the beach in those days. When the boats from the mainland docked, there was a general thrill that sparked through the people, and kids could be heard cheering for the incoming Hylians from miles out at sea. 

A convenience store sat at the edge of the town, and the soldiers that arrived on the island after a long journey seemed to always quench their sea thirst with a ceremonial glass of milk at the store’s counter. 

The island was a perpetual summer, and the sea’s breeze brought a stickiness inland that made daylight unbearable. Rising early, it was a right of passage for soldiers in training to make rounds on the island. There were hills for running, and huge forests full of trees that culminated at a hill where soldiers would watch the sun go down and rest their bodies before taking turns diving into the water below. The island seemed to exist outside of time, and its worn down paths and beaten up blue benches were a welcoming backdrop to the coming of age for many soldiers on the precipice of adulthood and servitude for the kingdom. 

The islanders themselves lived and passed on no differently from any other sect, but their welcoming nature and excitement for the visiting soldiers spanned generations. They offered their homes to the weary soldiers, their lone payment accepted in the form of a nightly run of milk bottles to every villager on the island. While their friends slept peacefully, a few unlucky soldiers would run through the night, dropping wooden cartons full of bottled milk, and collecting emptied cartons from the night before. 

Every glass of milk started at the general store on the edge of town, and the sounds of bottles clanging together as soldiers ran or biked by became white noise that helped send the islanders to sleep. 

The shopkeeper himself, Dandy, was a man of an age that had long passed Hyrule by. There was a strength that flowed through his sinewy body, and the only sign of age was a single streak of silver hair that could be seen in his tied back locks. His shirt was always left open, and beads of sweat poured down his forehead at all hours of the day. Much like the island itself, he always managed to wear a smile in the summer’s heat. 

The end of the season always brought a sadness to the shopkeeper, as he watched his favorite travelers depart the island. He knew nearly all of them would never return, though he had come to accept his place on the island as much more of a stop than a home. Years after the island and village had broken apart, after the events of the calamity, Dandy found himself wandering the world, searching for the place he called home in his youth. 

It was a place hidden in the hills, he recalled, though he couldn’t quite remember its name. The pathways were made of mossy stone, and the water that ran along the paths were a sapphire blue. He remembered placing a basket of twine in the water, and pulling out enough fish for his family to eat for three nights. He went back, day after day, and grew fat on the fish the water provided. 

He had always meant to make it back to his hometown after all his years traveling, but the way forward had robbed him of his only way to return home. He’d forgotten the path, and he seemed so far from being able to find it again. 

In his bid to remember, he often thought back to a very peculiar summer he had spent on Eventide island, before the calamity had taken hold of it. He remembered the two boys, the only two boys to come back to the island. 

He wondered how they were, and resolved to recall their story as he picked himself up and set back out on his journey. 

************************************************************************************************************

Link dug his feet into the muddy sand of the beach, and felt the coolness of the water below travel up his bones into his bare chest. Night had arrived, and with it the cooling breeze of the sea, but somehow the island’s typical stickiness persisted. He had tried to wear a cover to protect his skin from the mosquitoes that plagued his midnight runs, but the sweat made it unbearable. 

The moon had settled out over the water, and he imagined he could see the shore of Hyrule from his place on the shore. He heard the sounds of ships arriving at Hyrule’s bay, the girls in the townsquare that would greet them as they came home. He imagined waking up next to them, and the inevitable relief that would wash over him. 

He was tired, and he nearly gave way to the nauseating guilt that lingered in his stomach. The time drew nearer for leaving, and he waited as the water gathered in pools around his feet before pulling back out to sea. 

There was an inevitability to returning home, and nearly all of him was ready to go back to Hyrule. His legs ached from running. His back was broken down from carrying bags of stone from the island’s end to end. His arms creaked from their dives into the sea and their climbs back up cliffs that faced the water. 

Worst of all, he couldn’t keep food down any longer. The island had taken the ease that filled him to the brim in his youth and replaced it with an inescapable anxiety that his body wholly rejected. 

All he felt was guilt, and he was ready for the sea to wash it away. 

He heard the ringing of small bells on a bike as someone drove by on a stone walkway near the beach. It was barely detectable over the sound of the waves that came in, and the creaking of night’s cicadas in the nearby trees, but Link had been waiting. The sound of the bells brought a smile to his face, and he watched as the passerby raced on towards the convenience store for their nightly delivery. 

His footprints stayed in the mud for a while, deep enough to survive the pounding of the sea. He stayed there, watching them wash away. After they’d disappeared, he started for the convenience store and his nightly milk run. 

Link made night runs with exactly one other soldier in his time on the island. He and another boy had both agreed to make the runs for the town. Link had made the offer to the captain as a way to train up his body. Truthfully, at the start, his request was born out of a need to carry as much of the weight of the royal guard as possible on his back. 

Why the other boy had agreed to make the runs with him, he could never truly say. His name was Yu, and though they shared adjacent beds in the castle’s barracks, they had never shared a word before. Link often saw Yu on his nightly runs around the castle, watching the stars. It was odd - he insisted on never sleeping, but it wasn’t for a tangible purpose. Link built his body into glimmering steel, but the boy was content to lose sleep watching the Hylian sky. 

He saw the bike he’d heard earlier laying against the outside wall of the convenience store. He heard a booming laugh inside the store, and took the time to feel the worn down handles of the bike. They were a cool metal, eroded over years of use by the many soldiers who’d come to the island and delivered milk into the night. 

Still, he swore the handles were soft, nearly like the water that washed his feet at the beach. Nearly like the hands of the boy he could hear inside. He dropped his bag and changes of clothes outside the shop, and took a last look at the bike before walking inside. 

“Water nice this late at night?” the boy asked, glancing over at Link as they walked his bike up the path way from the convenience store. 

“Maybe if we finish early, we can stop by on our way back.” the boy continued. 

Link didn’t answer, just as he didn’t answer most of the boy’s questions on the nights they delivered together. It wasn’t mean-spirited, not entirely. He just found that he could avoid answering, and Yu would still find things to talk about. 

There was an oddness buried in listening to his voice when the island was quiet. Away from the beach, the only sounds left on the island were the cicadas and the jingling of the milk bottles in their cartons. Those sounds seemed to stop whenever he opened his mouth, like the island wanted to hear, too. 

The island getting to listen in made Link hate the whole thing even more. He was selfish that way. 

“Sometimes I think about what we’ll do when we get home, Link,” the boy started, “and the first thing I’m gonna do is make sure I write a letter about you.” 

“I’m gonna send it in this bottle, right here,” he continued, taking out a bottle of milk and holding it up to the moon. 

Link glanced over, letting his eyes meet the boy’s. 

“Don’t worry,” the boy said, replying to whatever he seemed to find in his partner’s gaze, “I won’t use your name.” 

He emptied the milk of the bottle over the hard ground, and tossed the bottle to Link. Link nearly lost hold of one of the cartons he was carrying, but he managed to catch it. 

“Keep that for me.” the boy said, “it’d be too dangerous to write a letter about you.”

They delivered milk into the hours of the night, occasionally diverging paths and reuniting whenever the roads allowed. The time apart was calming for Link, and he viewed them like taking a nap. The heat of the night seemed to dissipate when he was alone, and his body felt strong. Still, he found himself just a bit happier every time he heard the familiar ringing of bells coming up behind him. 

Yu was a skinnier boy, with tight muscles that never seemed to grow. He struggled to lift the carts on his own, so the shopkeeper had given him a bike to make his trials a bit easier. He still had to peddle them across the island, and undoubtedly, he was stronger than when their boats arrived at Eventide. Still, his long black hair fell over a face that was drenched in sweat nightly and routinely out of breath. For Link, the island’s trials were like breathing, and although he too found the climate unbearable, there was a naturalness to his physique that promised growth after his journey on the island ended. 

Still, every time he drew near, the boy found a way to calm his breathing and regain his composure. It was admirable, and Link appreciated that, for the most part, he managed to keep up with him through the night. None of the other boys had made any effort to take part in their nightly training. 

It was something they condemned the other boys for, but truthfully, it was the fragile source of their happiness. 

The last house on their route was near the edge of a forest at the center of the island, and it happened to be the shopkeeper that lived there. He was just getting home when they happened upon his house, and he greeted them with a laugh. He took the empty cartons from them, and parked the bike just outside his door. They offered to take the bike back to the store for him, but he contended that it was only right for them to enjoy their time around the island on foot - it was the only true way to experience the magic of that summer. 

They decided to head to the highest peak of the island, and make a jump down into the water before swimming back to the beach. 

Plans changed, though, when they found a little stone path they’d never seen before. It led into a beautiful clearing, with a small basin of water cut in the grassy floor of the forest. There were no paths leading to the water, and a rain the day before had taken the water level nearly to the tip of the basin. Still, Link recalled the sapphire blue of it, and how it seemed to come from some place he would never see. 

Link sat against a tree for a while, resting his back and breathing in the air. He watched the boy lay out near the surface of the water. He danced his fingers on the surface, whistling along occasionally to the sounds of the cicadas and rejoicing in the small oasis the island had given them. 

The stickiness of the outside world seemed to stop, and their path had landed them in a cool air that soothed their broken bodies. They sat for a while, their eyes closed and enjoying each other’s company. 

“They’re going to love you one day, Link,” the boy said, “And when they do, I think a lot of people will be jealous.” 

“I don’t think you’ll really remember this place,” he continued, “I’ve been around long enough to know.” 

The boy stuck his hand in the water, splashing some of it towards the moon that hung above the water’s surface in the sky. He sat up, and leaned back on his hands. 

“But you’ll remember this clearing, and maybe you’ll remember me,” he said. 

Link watched him for a while, and remarked that this was one of the only times Yu had said anything that lacked confidence. Still, he recognized the tender truth in what he was saying. 

They walked back together, tossing the glass bottle back and forth. Neither of them wanted it to break, but neither of them could face asking the other to stop the game. 

When they reached the beach, they stuck their feet in the sand for a while, watching each other as the sea cleaned their bodies, and the mud dirtied them again. Saying goodbye to that night was inevitable, and there would be many after where they would take trips to the clearing.

For the one time on the island, though, they embraced one another and rolled together on the beach. It was an awkward, huffing affair. 

The boy cried in Link’s arms, and asked him not to forget the clearing. He described the beauty of the sapphire water, and the way the grass felt against his skin. They soaked their bodies together, and watched the spots where they had laid wash away and disappear.


	4. Mothers and Daughters

Zelda searched for sleep, but all she could muster were odd bits and ends of memories. She expected them to be filled to the brim with a bitter sadness, but her own head surprised her with images of dull happiness spread over childhood runs on horses and the way the room smelled like the Hyrule kitchens when tables were filled with early morning crepes. 

She turned her pillow, and was washed over with the smell of honey candy her father used to suck on when he read a good book with her in his study. It made the pillowcase feel like the scruff of the beard he always failed to shave, and it ended her night at the Fairycatcher Inn for all intents and purposes. 

She replaced her white gown with a pair of black trousers and a warm night jacket she’d purchased on a trip they’d taken to Rito village. She rubbed her hands together, and in the quiet of her own room, pulled back a illusory bow string. 

She’d been quite the shot, and from time to time, she enjoyed the opportunity to light their way across Hyrule late at night with the fire of a glowing arrow. 

She pulled back her hair in a short ponytail, and ducked out of the window in her room into the cool night that enveloped Karata. Undoubtedly, Link would have heard her from his room across the hall. In their younger days, he would have taken after her, chasing a dream to fulfill some great duty. 

It had taken her a long time to come to grips with the idea that Link could love both his duty and the person she had been before the calamity. Whether those loves were equal, well, she wasn’t really interested in knowing. 

But these days, with the calamity gone and Link’s head locked away in memories from some far off place, she found herself alone far more often than she’d imagined. 

Night hung in the sky, but paper lanterns and torches lit with a blue fire kept the darkness at bay, emanating a soothing twilight that rested over the village. Cold air seemed trapped in the mountain, and she watched her breath catch in frost crystals on the leather palms of her gloves. 

The lateness of the hour didn’t hide the lights that continued to flicker in the houses she walked by, and she imagined the frigid water in the little streams that lined her path. The village itself rested on spring water that came down from deep within the mountains that lined the surrounding area, and it was a deep sapphire blue. It held no impurities, but her eyes lost focus the deeper she tried to peer into it. 

Children of the town brought twine baskets to the spring, and scooped never ending amounts of fish and plants that would be cooked in warm pots for dinner. 

The idea of that warm food made her dream of her Hyrulian kitchens, and dread the idea of her next meal out in the open fields. Her own cooking was always quite interesting, though it never failed to bring Link right up to death’s door. She swore his cooking was somewhere between solid rock and the soothing bend of slightly boiled tree bark. 

They were both terrible cooks, and even the bread and cheese they ate at traveling taverns were a significant improvement for their diet. 

All avenues in the village seemed to spring forth like an estuary from a central spring of water and floating stone that held up an ice figure of a beautiful woman playing on an ocarina. 

The rest of the village seemed to reek of nostalgia, and she swore every alleyway looked eerily familiar to a castle hall she’d known as a child. The sound of the intermittent pattering of rain against the stone blocks at her boots made the tips of her fingers tingle as she recalled the rain that tapped against the flipping pages of a book she read seated against a tree just after she lost her mother. Sometimes it was hard to remember if her whole life had occurred just after she lost her mother, or if she’d fooled herself into thinking it wasn’t so long ago. Either way, things seemed so jammed together. 

Though the village itself overloaded her senses, the woman playing an ocarina in front of her seemed from some other planet, and though she was undeniably beautiful, what she exuded was exceedingly overwhelming. 

Whatever unknown feeling came over her, all she could do was give a thin smile. Before the calamity, all she yearned for was knowing. She wanted to know the way Link worked, the way he was born with courage and the way he could force it out of himself. She wanted to know if one could make their own courage, and she wanted to know why Hyrule had chosen her and why there were so many things that she’d never be able to know. 

Those things drifted away the longer she was unable to see her friends, and the more time she spent on the road with the hero of Hyrule whose wounds could never truly heal. The space for wanting to know more had been filled with a deep scar tissue that mixed sadness with happiness in a thing she could only call her acceptance of the world life had given her. 

The old woman from their first few moments in the village carried a bucket full of the village’s sapphire water and the remaining scraps of what used to be a rag. She made her way around the statue, washing it as best she could. Each motion made the statue glisten, and she swore the air around her grew colder. 

The woman reached the end of her bucket’s supply, and took a moment to rest on a stone bench. She huffed, and the cold of the night seemed unkind against her frail form. Sweat poured over her, and she wheezed trying to make her way to fill the bucket to the brim with more water. 

“Can I help you fill it again?” Zelda asked, out stretching a hand for the rusted bucket. 

The woman was eager for the help, handing the bucket to Zelda and taking her other hand. She seemed much older than she’d been just a few hours earlier. Still, the unmistakable warmth of life surged through her grip, and Zelda couldn’t help but feel like she’d been on this earth for nearly as long as Hyrule had been alive. 

“Come to this spot child - this is the best water she needs,” the woman said, pointing at a particular pool of water that seemed no different from the rest. 

Zelda filled the bucket, and she felt a glow slide up her fingers and through her body, all the way down to her toes. She felt warm, like she was seated next to a hearth, but her body felt strong. There was a dull burn that shot up her arms not unlike the sensation of climbing a mountain. It renewed her strength, and there was power that bloomed forth from her chest. 

“Shall I help you wash her?” Zelda asked, motioning towards the beautiful figure.

“No my girl, I’m afraid this is my duty alone. You’ve been helpful enough.” the old woman replied with a smile. There was sweet acceptance as she went back to washing the figure over. 

“Who is she?” Zelda asked, watching the older woman work. 

“She’s my daughter,” the old woman said. 

There was silence between them for a while, and Zelda didn’t dare break it. In her experience, grief was a natural thing that bloomed of its own accord. It did not respond to poking, or even careful pruning. She was okay with returning to her bed in the town inn, and leaving Karata village none-the-wiser about this beautiful woman and her ocarina. 

“It’s always the creative ones, the real special ones that leave you know,” the woman said after taking a long pause. As the woman washed the statue’s boots, Zelda swore she saw its head glisten in the rain.

“Where did she go?” Zelda asked. 

“She said she was going to go find a new song,” the woman replied. 

“And is she coming back?” Zelda asked. 

“Unfortunately she did,” the woman replied, placing her bare hand against the statue. She smiled, and moved her head to the sound of an ocarina only she could hear. 

“She was sick when she came back to us,” the old woman started, her hand still stuck against the statue, “and she didn’t have much time.” 

“When she was a child, she played the most beautiful melodies on that ocarina. You could hear them all through the valley. Travelers who wandered by the town by chance found their way here to its sound,” the woman continued. 

“I wish I could hear them,” Zelda replied. 

At that, the woman shed a few small tears, and rubbed both hands against the visage of her daughter. It wasn’t an overwhelming, sad grief, but a bitter one that only comes with time. 

“When people leave here,” the woman said, “they can’t come back. Not until it’s their time. When I heard she was in the village again, I knew there was nothing I could do.” 

“The worst thing was she couldn’t play her ocarina. Her lips were dry, and her chest was weak. Damn thing betrayed her at the end.” the woman remarked staring at the ocarina that sat at her daughter’s lips. 

The woman wiped her brow, putting the ribbons of the rag in the rusted-out bucket and taking a seat a few feet away from Zelda. She stared at her daughter for a while, and Zelda couldn’t find any words to ease the pain that sat in the air. 

“The ocarina was her brother’s. He’d given it to her before he left the village. He’d found it hidden away in the mountains behind the village when he was just a child. He was never really good at playing it,” the woman laughed. 

“So this statue is for you to remember her by,” Zelda asked. 

“It has nothing to do with remembering her, my child,” the woman replied, “it’s about not being able to say goodbye.” 

“It’s not an easy thing to do,” Zelda answered back. 

Zelda noticed the old woman’s hands were rubbed raw from touching the ice of the statue. She wondered how the heat of the water she’d brought up from the spring hadn’t melted the statue instantly, but that wonder only lasted a few moments. Whatever magic filled this town, Zelda felt the deep presence of harmony. She could ask for no more than that. 

“Well,” the old woman said, grabbing her bucket and leaping up, “I suppose it’s time to get going. 

“Will I see you again?” Zelda asked. 

“I’m here every night at the same time, my child,” the woman replied, looking at the statue of her daughter, “But I should imagine you’ll be looking to talk to someone very different from myself come tomorrow.” 

The woman started to walk home again, grunting as she held the bucket over her shoulder. 

“Do you know why we’re here?” Zelda asked. 

“You won’t find what you’re looking for here, sweet girl. There’s still a ways to go,” the woman replied. 

There was bewilderment that came over Zelda’s face, and she was at once keenly aware that this entire village seemed to know more about her destination than she did. 

“You’ll need to speak with Tilia before you go. Come back here during daylight and I’m sure he’ll be here, drinking til the sun goes down.” the woman said, turning back with a smile. 

“How can he help us?” Zelda asked. 

“Go home and sleep my girl,” the woman said, walking away, “and make sure you bring that hero friend of yours. Tilia will need to see him.” 

The woman waved her hands as she exited the square, and Zelda wasn’t nearly ready to ask anymore questions. People knew of princess Zelda of Hyrule, but often all they knew about her was a conception the kingdom had created in their head, or a story they’d read in a book. Zelda kept pieces of herself hidden from nearly everyone she’d come across since being a child, but all the protections she’d put on her body, heart and soul seemed to wash away as soon they’d entered Karata village. 

She walked back in the direction of the inn, watching crystals form again in the cup of her hands. She took deep breaths and watched her warm exhales melt the crystals on her palms. She took extra care to step in any puddles of sapphire water, and felt a warmth flow through the soles of her feet to the ends of her ears. 

What Link would have to say, she couldn’t be sure. But there was an inevitability to the progress she’d made, and she felt they were certainly a step closer than when she’d left the inn. 

When she climbed through her window, she carefully folded her clothes and placed them next to the bottle in her traveling bag. She slung the bag across her shoulder, and wrapped her body in a mass of warm blankets and sheets, much like she did as a child. She let her body be enveloped by memory, and thought back to what the old woman had said about her daughter, and the reflected on the idea of a person forgetting their path home. It seemed impossible, but she knew there was a reason this place didn’t exist in any map in the Hyrulian library. 

The way the village seemed to play tricks on her mind with ease was a scary thing, but it was a scary thing she would confront with her partner as soon as sleep and a morning breakfast together had replenished their bodies. For now, she was in her father’s study, the smell of honey candy in her nose, and a good book in her hands.


End file.
